100+ Best Copywriting Quotes from All-Time Great Copywriters

Hubcopy

• August 29, 2023

Do you dream of becoming a great copywriter? Or want to get better at writing your own copy? Copywriting quotes could be your secret weapon.

Here’s a curated collection of 100+ quotes from the world’s most respected copywriting brains.

These quotes contain evergreen copywriting tips to help you master the art of persuasion and write copy that converts.

In this article:

• What Are Copywriting Quotes?
• Some of The Greatest Copywriters of All Time
• 118 Copywriting Quotes. 10 Copy Maestros. Unlimited Lessons.
• David Ogilvy Quotes on Copywriting
• Robert Collier Copywriting Quotes
• Claude Hopkins Advice for Copywriters
• From Joseph Sugarman Copywriting Experience
• John Caples Quotes on Copywriting Headlines
• Gary Halbert Copywriting Nuggets
• Copywriting Lessons From Eugene Schwartz
• Leo Burnett’s Message for New Copywriters
• Howard Gossage on Copywriting Success
• Robert W. Bly Copywriting Insights

What Are Copywriting Quotes?

Copywriting quotes are snippets of advice from great copywriters condensed into bite-sized tips you can use to improve your copy skills.

These quotes reveal the secrets behind crafting messages that tap into your audience’s desires and lead them to buy.

From researching to editing, writing headlines down to the CTA, copywriting quotes can be your cheat sheets for writing copy that grabs attention and makes people take action.

They pack in a few words;

• Their concept and perspective on copywriting
• Lessons and insights from their mistakes
• Inspiration for anyone walking in their footsteps. Which is why you are here.

Before listing these endeared 118 sayings from the best copywriters of all time, let’s take a brief walk through history

Some of The Greatest Copywriters of All Time

• John Emory Power is regarded as the first copywriter in history. He started a full-time copywriting career in 1870 at the American department store Lord & Taylor.
• Claude C. Hopkins had an illustrious career in advertising. His book, Scientific Advertising, published in 1923, set the pace for modern ad writing. The book is a must-read for marketers who wish to master the art of selling.
• John Caples is one of the most influential Ad men of the past century. He pioneered the techniques of effective copy-testing.
• Great minds such as David Ogilvy, Joseph Sugarman, Howard Gossage, Shirley Polykoff, Rossa Reeves, and Gary Halbert were the trusted voices of the 19th century.
• Today, Joana Weibie, Demain Farnworth, Brain Clark, and others are prospecting their names in the copywriting Hall of Fame. Thanks to their awe-inspiring work.

Studying the works of these extraordinary copywriting figures should help you add extra to your ordinary.

Their quotes are a good place to start.

118 Copywriting Quotes. 10 Copy Maestros. Unlimited Lessons.

From Ogilvy’s wit to Schwartz’s sales secrets, here are 118 copywriting quotes to improve your copywriting skills.

Here you go in no particular order;

David Ogilvy Quotes on Copywriting

The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything.

David Ogilvy

1. “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
2. “Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.”
3. “Advertisements with long copy convey the impression that you have something important to say, whether people read the copy or not.”
4. “Concentrate your time, your brains, and your advertising money on your successes. Back your winners, and abandon your losers.”
5. “I don’t believe in tricky advertising, I don’t believe in cute advertising, I don’t believe in comic advertising. The people who perpetrate that kind of advertising never had to sell anything in their lives.”
6. “When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”
   
7. “It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.”
8. “Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.”
9. “Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.”
10. “The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.”
11. “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”
12. “Whenever you can, make the product itself the hero of your advertising. If you think the product is too dull, I have news for you: there are no dull products, only dull writers.”

Robert Collier Copywriting Quotes

We have become so accustomed to hearing everyone claim that his product is the best in the world, or the cheapest, that we take all such statements with a grain of salt.

Robert Collier

1. “Before you put pen to paper before you ring for your stenographer, decide in your own mind what effect you want to produce on your reader — what feeling you must arouse in him.”
2. “There are only two reasons why your reader will do as you tell him to in your letter. The first is that you have made him want something so badly that of his own inertia, he reaches out for your order card to get it. The other is that you have aroused in him the fear that he will lose something worthwhile if he does not.”
3. “The headline of an advertisement accounts for 60% of the pull of that ad. In the same way, the start of a letter makes or breaks the letter because if the start does not interest your reader, he never gets down to the rest of your letter.”
4. “Study your reader first – your product second. If you understand his reactions and present those phases of your product that relate to his needs, then you cannot help but write a good letter.”
   
5. “You know that every man is constantly holding a mental conversation with himself, the burden of which is his own interests — his business, his loved ones, his advancement. And you have tried to chime in on that conversation with something that fits in with his thoughts.”
6. “Make every thought, every fact, that comes into your mind pay you a profit. Make it work and produce for you. Think of things not as they are but as they might be. Don’t merely dream — but create!”
7. “Finally, tell him what to do. Don’t leave it to him to decide. We are all mentally lazy, you know, so dictate his action for him — get your suggester to work on him. If he is to do certain things, describe them. Tell him to put his name on the enclosed card, stamp and mail, or pin his check or dollar bill to this letter and return in the enclosed envelope.”
8. “You have to compete in the same way for your reader’s attention. He is not looking for your letter. He has a thousand and one other things more important to him to occupy his mind. Why should he divert his attention from them to plow through pages of type about you or your projects?”

Claude Hopkins Advice for Copywriters

To properly understand advertising or to learn even its rudiments, one must start with the right conception. Advertising is salesmanship. Its principles are the principles of salesmanship. Successes and failures in both lines are due to like causes. Thus every advertising question should be answered by the salesman’s standards.

Claude Hopkins

1. “Brilliant writing has no place in advertising…Never try to show off. You are selling your product, not yourself. Do nothing to cloud your objective. Use the shortest words possible. Let every phrase ring with sincerity. From start to finish, offer service. That is what you are selling; that is all your prospect wants. Weigh every sentence on that basis…”
2. “Remember, the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests or profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising.”
3. “The product itself should be its own best salesman. Not the product alone, but the product plus a mental impression and atmosphere, which you place around it.”
4. “Some say, “Be very brief. People will read but little.” Would you say that to a salesman? With a prospect standing before him, would you confine him to any certain number of words? That would be an unthinkable handicap.”
5. “Ads are not written to entertain. When they do, those entertainment seekers are little likely to be the people whom you want. This is one of the greatest advertising faults. Ad writers abandon their part. They forget they are salesmen and try to be performers. Instead of sales, they seek applause.”
6. “None but those who regard advertising as some magic dreamland will ever try to sell without sampling.”
7. “The most effective thing I have ever found in advertising is the trend of the crowd. That is a factor not to be overlooked.
8. “Ads are planned and written with some utterly wrong conception. They are written to please the seller. The interests of the buyer are forgotten.”
   
9. “Best in the world,” “lowest price in existence, ” etc., are, at best, claiming the expected. But superlatives of that sort are usually damaging. They suggest looseness of expression, a tendency to exaggerate, and a careless truth. They lead readers to discount all the statements that you make.”
10. “In the same way, it is found that an offer limited to a certain class of people is far more effective than a general offer.”
11. “People are like sheep. They cannot judge values, nor can you and I. We judge things largely by others’ impressions, by popular favour.
12. “Don’t, to gain general and useless attention, sacrifice the attention that you want.”
13. “The purpose of a headline is to pick out people you can interest. You wish to talk to someone in a crowd. So the first thing you say is, “Hey there, Bill Jones,” to get the right person’s attention. So it is in advertisement.”
    

From Joseph Sugarman Copywriting Experience

Copywriting is a mental process, the successful execution of which reflects the sum total of all your experiences, your specific knowledge and your ability to mentally process that information and transfer it onto a sheet of paper for the purpose of selling a product or service.

Joseph Sugarman

1. “The prospect has basic emotional needs that your product will solve, regardless of how sophisticated or simple your product offering is. Examine those emotional needs.”
2. “So your first sentence should be very compelling by virtue of its short length and ease of reading. No long multisyllabic words. Keep it short, sweet and almost incomplete so that the reader has to read the next sentence.”
3. “All the elements in an advertisement are primarily designed to do one thing and one thing only: get you to read the first sentence of the copy.”
4. “Get the reader to say yes and harmonize with your accurate and truthful statements while reading your copy.” 
5. “You must become an expert on a product, service or anything you write about to really be effective.”
6. “The ideas presented in your copy should flow in a logical fashion, anticipating your prospect’s questions and answering them as if the questions were asked face-to-face.”
   
7. “Sometimes changing a single word will increase response in an ad. John Caples, the legendary direct marketer, changed the word repair to the word fix and saw a 20 percent increase in response.
8. “Another fact to realize about writing copy is that the first draft of an ad is often terrible, and the real skill in copywriting is taking that rough draft and polishing it…I often pointed out to my students that if everybody in the class were given the assignment of writing a draft of an ad for a product, the first draft of my ad would quite likely be terrible compared to everybody else’s. It is what I do with the copy after my first draft that really makes the difference.”
9. “Your readers should be so compelled to read your copy that they cannot stop reading until they read all of it as if sliding down a slippery slide.”
10. “Telling a story can effectively sell your product, create the environment or get the reader well into your copy as you create an emotional bonding with your prospect.”
11. “Every communication should be a personal one, from the writer to the recipient, regardless of the medium used.”
12. “Never sell a product or service. Sell a concept.”
13. “Copy Should be long enough to cause the reader to take the action that you request.”

John Caples Quotes on Copywriting Headlines

Avoid the “too smart” headline. Instead of making the readers want to buy, it simply makes them exclaim, “How clever!”  WOMEN! READ THIS SUMMERY SUMMARY, …

John Caples

1. “Do not try to make your headline so short that it fails to express your idea properly. It’s more important to say what you want to say – even if it takes 20 words to do than make it short and fail to express your idea.”
2. “For every curiosity headline that succeeds in getting results, a dozen will fail.” 
3. “In striving to produce an attractive headline, the copywriter should not emphasize the “quick, easy way” to such an extent that the headline becomes unbelievable.”
4. “What good is all the painstaking work on a copy if the headline isn’t right? If the headline doesn’t stop people, the copy might as well be written in Greek.”
5. “The best headlines are those that appeal to the reader’s self-interest, that is, headlines based on reader benefits. They offer readers something they want – and get from you.”
6. “Remember that the reader’s attention is yours for only a single instant. They will not use up their valuable time trying to figure out what you mean.”
   
7. Every single element in an advertisement – headline, subhead, photo, and copy – must be put there not because it looks good, not because it sounds good, but because testing has shown that it works best!
8. “The most frequent reason for unsuccessful advertising is advertisers who are so full of their own accomplishments (the world’s best seed!) that they forget to tell us why we should buy (the world’s best lawn!).”
9. “You can write a 1st paragraph that continues the same thought you expressed in your headline. If you stop a reader with a headline about house paint, you can be sure of at least one thing about that reader: He wants more info about house paint. You will not lose him as long as you continue to give him what he wants.”
10. “Get the big point of your advertisement into your headline. Use your headline as a hook to reach out and catch the special group of people you are trying to interest.”
11. “Unsuccessful headlines were not written without a strong appeal, but it was the wrong appeal for that product and that audience.”

Gary Halbert Copywriting Nuggets

What happens when you read your copy out loud is that you will verbally stumble over all the places that are not smooth…

Gary Halbert

1. “Get yourself a collection of good ads and direct mail pieces and read them aloud and copy them in your own handwriting.”
2. “What you really want is for the reader to order from your ad. Listen up, dummy, If you are writing for applause… you will go home with empty pockets.”
3. “Do you know what is the most-often missing ingredient in a sales message? It’s the sales message doesn’t tell an interesting story.”
4. “I’m the last guy to ask for advice on how to have a successful copywriting business. I’m not in the copywriting business. I’m in the self-aggrandizement business.”
5. “The most important thing is a hungry market. Not a brilliant burger.”“Be careful. You want to know what people actually DO buy, not what they SAY they buy.”
6. “Constantly be on the lookout for groups of people (markets) who have demonstrated that they are starving (or at least hungry!) for some particular product or service.”
7. “Fight any urge to sound like a cliché and use phrases which a reader could finish on their own.”
8. “If your prospect gets an instant ‘lift’ from just looking at your ad, then he will start reading it and looking for reasons to convince himself that the promise of your ad is true!”
   
9. “It has long been my belief that a lot of money can be made by making offers to people who are at an emotional turning point in their lives. For example, when they have just had a baby, just gotten married, just lost a loved one, just gotten a raise, just filed bankruptcy, just purchased a new car, and so on.”
10. “Use simple, common, everyday words. Use ‘get’ instead of ‘procure’. Write short sentences and short paragraphs. Use ‘transition’ words and phrases to make your writing flow smoothly. Do you notice how I use transition words and phrases such as the following? Well, as a matter of fact, I first blah… Now, naturally, we don’t want to blah, blah…”

Copywriting Lessons From Eugene Schwartz

There is your audience, There is the language, There are the words that they use.

Eugene Schwartz

1. “Copy is not written. If anyone tells you ‘you write copy,’ sneer at them. Copy is not written. Copy is assembled. You do not write copy. You assemble it. You are working with a series of building blocks, you are putting the building blocks together, and then you are putting them in certain structures, you are building a little city of desire for your person to come and live in.” 
2. “The arts not only imbue our sense of sight, balance, movement, touch and hearing, they also lift our logical minds – the traditional focus of modern education – into the reaches of possibility, invention and genius.”
3. “No sentence can be effective if it contains facts alone. It must also contain emotion, image, logic, and promise.”
4. “Breakthrough Advertising is not about building better mousetraps. It is, however, about building larger mice – and then building a terrifying fear of them in your customers.”
5. “Facts are boring. The audience needs to feel invested. It must invoke emotions in the audience. There must be interesting imagery, emotions, and logic also present.”
   
6. “The greatest mistake marketers make is trying to create demand.” 
7. “Let’s get to the heart of the matter. The power, the force, the overwhelming urge to own that makes advertising work comes from the market itself, and not from the copy.”
8. “Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people and focus those already existing desires onto a particular product.” 
9. “This is the copywriter’s task: not to create this mass desire – but to channel and direct it.”

Leo Burnett’s Message for New Copywriters

Anyone who thinks that people can be fooled or pushed around has an inaccurate and pretty low estimate of people – and he won’t do very well in advertising.

Leo Burnett

1. The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.”
2. “I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad.”
3. “I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people but that of boring them to death.”
4. “Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret… to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.
5. “The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.”
6. “If you can’t turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn’t be in the ad writing business at all.”
   
7. “If you are writing about baloney, don’t try to make it Cornish hen because that is the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darned good, baloney.
8. “Advertising says to people, ‘Here’s what we’ve got. Here’s what it will do for you. Here’s how to get it.’
9. “We want consumers to say, ‘That’s a hell of a product’ instead of, ‘That’s a hell of an ad.”
10. “Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.”
11. “Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness.
12. “Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.

Howard Gossage on Copywriting Success

I don’t know how to speak to everybody, only to somebody.

Howard Gossage

1. “I can’t remember ever seeing a really outstanding ad that couldn’t be traced to an outstanding ego.”
2. “To explain responsibility to advertising men is like trying to convince an eight-year-old that sexual intercourse is more fun than a chocolate ice cream cone.”
3. “The object of your advertising should not be to communicate with your consumers or your prospects at all but to terrorize your competition’s copywriters.”
4. “An ad should ideally be like one end of an interesting conversation.”
   
5. “Is advertising worth saving? Yes, if we can learn to look at advertising not as a means for filling so much space and time but as a technique for solving problems.”
6. “Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest- it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes.”
7. “How often do you have to read a book, a news story, or see a movie or play? If it is interesting, once is enough; if it is dull, once is plenty.”
8. “The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.”
9. “Our first duty is not to the old sales curve. It is to the audience.”
10. “When advertising talks about the audience, it doesn’t mean its audience. It means somebody else’s, gathered there to watch or read something else.”

Robert W. Bly Copywriting Insights

We are not in the business of being original. We are in the business of reusing things that work.

Robert W. Bly

1. “Clever advertising can convince people to try a bad product once. But it can’t convince them to buy a product they’ve already tried and didn’t like.”
2. “The words in your copy should be “like the windows in a storefront. The reader should be able to see right through them and see the product.”
3. “To sell, your copy must get attention . . . hook the reader’s interest . . . create a desire for the product . . . prove the product’s superiority . . . and ask for action.”
4. “Avoid pompous words and fancy phrases.”
5. “Grade your performance as a copywriter on sales generated by your copy, not on originality.”
6. “Consumers are exposed to more than twice as many ads today as fifteen years ago, but pay attention to only 20 percent more.”
7. “People use big words to impress others, but they rarely do. More often, big words annoy and distract the reader from what the writer is trying to say.”
   
8. “Instead of creating aesthetically pleasing prose, you have to dig into a product or service, uncover the reasons why consumers would want to buy the product, and present those sales arguments in copy that is read, understood, and reacted to—copy that makes the arguments so convincingly the customer can’t help but want to buy the product being advertised.”
9. “Experienced copywriters turn those features into customer benefits: reasons why the reader should buy the product.”
10. “The surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete.”

Before You Leave…

Copywriting quotes are, without a doubt, a great entry point to sharpening your skills. But let me not deceive you.

If you really want to command sales with words, there are more areas you need to poke your nose.

1. Read copywriting books
2. Follow copywriting blogs where you can learn effective copywriting strategies and persuasive techniques.
3. Take copywriting courses
4. And most importantly, start writing.

Don’t wait till you become perfect because you will never be.

All first attempts are sloppy and lame. Most people quit after first experience with things that don’t go so well, but if you are like my pop and me, then you know that the first attempt is almost destined to fail.

Gary Halbert